"The Secret Life of Plants" by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird
Our relationship with plants is reflective of larger questions that we should be asking.
Even Aristotle thought plants had souls, although he did not give them credit for any sensations.
Feelings they have, as well as the ability to move independently, and more.
The first part of the book plunges us right into establishing that plants have feelings and respond to attention and thoughts even from great distances. Attempting to understand the phenomena of plant perception, some researchers have perhaps been a bit bizarre in their attempts to put these perceptions to use; even attempting intergalactic communications.
It is unfortunate that our understanding of plants has to be made "useful."
Much research has been neglected and lost in our disregard of plants.
An Indian researcher, Sir Jagadis Chandra Bose, long forgotten, demonstrated that plants respond to stimuli just as animals do.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe's work in demonstrating the spiritual essence that lies behind plant's material form goes largely unnoticed.
What we have done is to categorize plants rather than try to understand them. This is to our detriment. Carl Linnaeus developed the classification method of all plants and animals, and it is about him that Raoul France said, "Wherever he went the laughing brook died, the glory of the flowers withered, the grace and joy of the meadows was transformed into withered corpses whose crushed and discolored bodies were described in a thousand minute Latin terms...a dreary catalogue of Greek and Latin labels... when the work was over, we stood estranged from nature."
Not all were so estranged. Darwin, de Bries, Luther Burbank all appreciated and talked to plants. George Washington Carver said, "Through the flower I talk to the Infinite."
Whether we study plant ESP, photograph their auras, apply sound, electricity, or love and study the resultant growth, perhaps we are missing the point.
Carver insisted that nature spirits abound in the woods.
The Secret Life of Plants may open your mind to the energy of both plants and humans, as well as the relationship of our individual cells to the cosmos.
Another book by the authors, "Secrets of the Soil."